About Us

Diversity Leadership at Cornell

The institutional leadership structure to support diversity consists of three leaders tapped to represent faculty, staff, and students, respectively, and are known as the Presidential Advisors on Diversity and Equity (PADE). The new leadership team is chaired by Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Avery August who will represent faculty. He is joined by Associate Vice President for Inclusion and Workforce Diversity Angela Winfield representing staff, and Dean of Students Vijay Pendakur representing undergraduate, graduate and professional students.

The role of the Presidential Advisors on Diversity and Equity is strategic, advisory and consultative. PADE meets regularly with the President’s senior staff and other members of the institutional leadership. They convene and organize key university wide gatherings and meetings. Implementation of initiatives and programs continues to be done at the local level by colleges and units.

The charge of the Presidential Advisors on Diversity and Equity:

Provide strategic direction, guidance, and recommendations to the President's senior staff, the Provost's council and the Dean's council, through attending regularly scheduled meetings (at least one meeting per semester with both the cabinet and the council), and additional meetings as deemed necessary by the cabinet, council and the PADE.

Advise the President and her cabinet on institutional university-wide goals and activities and metrics.

Evaluate, assess and modify current Towards New Destinations framework, including determining whether re-branding is necessary and whether/how to incorporate a top-down element with the bottom-up approach and oversee same.

Drive diversity communications on the diversity website, and partner across the university in diversity outreach on other outlets as well as on crises and incident response communications.

Convene and create a sense of community across various university-wide groups.

Create a linkage across the college and school diversity leads.

College and Unit Leadership

Each of Cornell's colleges and many organizational units have embedded diversity offices and professionals who regularly inform and collaborate with central diversity leadership. For more information visit college-maintained websites.

Some colleges and units maintain their own diversity councils. Diversity council resources are maintained by the university diversity leadership to support the work of college/unit leaders.